Grim Dawn (2016)

Grim Dawn is a great game and a satisfying RPG that plays very straightforward and easy. Like other RPG's, you control a character, defeat monsters and bosses, level up, spend skill points and complete quests. It is as classic as it will ever be. Grim Dawn has some unique features, however.

In Grim Dawn, you play as a character that has been possessed by the Aetherials and cured by the survivors of Devils Crossing. You start your adventure and fight against the forces of the dead, demons and other vile beasts. Like any classic RPG, your goal is to save the world and be the ultimate hero of the realms.

Some unique elements in Grim Dawn include the crafting system. You find components and blueprints throughout the game and can create relics and gear at the blacksmith.

You also make choices in the game by responding differently to NPCs and quest givers. This can result in different outcomes.

There is also a unique skill system in which you can multiclass and combine certain skills and damage type. My favorite is a Shaman Soldier Tank combo which obliterates everything with force and Thunder.

In your adventures, you come across totems that needs to be cleansed. When you did so, you receive a devotion point, which you can use for massive bonuses in one of the thirty-five skill trees under the stars.

The graphics are nice, grim and dark, just the way it should be. The animations and ragdoll are great and shooting or hitting an enemy with a club looks satisfying.

The sound is also great. The effects of weapons, and enemies sound solid, and the background music is atmospheric and relaxing.

The interface and controls are the same as games like Diablo and Sacred and easy to understand. The inventory management is also self-explanatory.

There are some problems with the game in my opinion:

The stats on the items are ridiculous. There are a million trillion different stats that all do something. Some stats sound exactly the same but apparently do something different. When you pick up an item with 20 different stats on it, it is very hard to see if you should keep that item or not. Certain core stats like Strength or Spirit speak for themselves, but 12 different stats that can all combined do something unique, it just messes with my head.

You can Earn Favor towards different factions (races and clans) to get better items, rewards and merchants. However, the progression of these favors is so incredibly slow, it feels like the ultimate grind of a thousand years.

Another slight problem for me is that the (mini) boss fights are very repetitive and mindless. You just whack them endlessly until they die. There is not some strategy, some attack window or game plan (with the exception of one boss). Just hack and pray. It gets repetitive really fast.

This is one of those games that you need to keep playing for years and years to fully complete. Not necessarily because of the endless content, but rather because of the inhumane grind for levels, renown status and special items with low drop rates.

In the end, the overall experience was great and the collecting of resources, iron, the levelling up, unlocking the totems and skill points kept me going and wondering what would happen next. The game can be a little mindless at times, but sometimes, a simple hack and slash game is all I need to relax. I would surely recommend this game.

I've always had a soft spot for Victorian Gothic Horror and this game does that with a dash of Lovecraft. While this combination isn't novel (Bloodborne did it a year before and more effectively for my preferences) and this isn't the best result of it, I still had a good time! It's a fun successor to Diablo 2 and succeeds more than Diablo 3 did for the fans.

I think this game is still plagued with issues, but these issues are unfortunately part of the conventional game design for this type of ARPG. I think I've come to the conclusion that I prefer ARPGs more like the Souls games than the gory loot pinata design of Diablo and it's ilk.

My issue with this style of ARPG is the focus on grinding to gain rare loot that spikes your power level significantly, then you reach a new cap and the grind starts anew. You are always seeking the next level of power creep which fuels the entire game play loop. At the heart of this grind is the constant repetition of the same content. Diablo cleverly got around this monotony by having procedural generated levels, enemies and random loot. As I've gotten older, this trick to have "technically" different content each time doesn't work for me anymore. The randomly generated levels rarely have good design and often times can be more tedious and frustrating to navigate. They also ALWAYS have the issue of looking the same because they literally are, just with scrambled together assets. Like AI generated content.

Grim Dawn, in contrast, has a preset world. This allows the devs to more cleverly build a level that is enjoyable (in theory) to navigate. Sadly, Grim Dawns levels still feel like they were procedurally generated... Lots of dead ends, paths blocked by a burning bush or a cupboard. A 3 foot tall fence... all lazy walls to block the player off. This is more excusable when everything is procedurally generated, but when you have a persistent world I set the bar higher for level design. Enemy variety is okay, but gets stale towards the end of the game when you start exclusively killing green abominations over and over again. It still nails the addictive gameplay loop. There's something that triggers the grey matter in all of our ape brains when you see something explode into giblets and drop shiny new weapons and armor. It's just a shame they couldn't make better levels. I still like the aesthetics, but the level design is lacking which is sadly common in this style of ARPGs.

Another issue with this genre of ARPGs is the contradiction between complexity of the meta and the overly simplistic moment to moment game play. The main appeal in this genre is planning and making builds. While I can see the appeal of the theorycrafting and the desire to have so much variety (this game has a staggering number of class combinations since you can combine any two classes together, resulting in about 72 different classes!), I honestly don't like a game that is so complex that it requires a significant investment of time to just start playing it... the game encourages you to look at guides (it's a constant tool tip in the loading screens) and while it's nice to have that available, I prefer a game that derives complexity from the moment to moment gameplay over complexity in the planning (which isn't technically gameplay).

Plotting a path, figuring out what items you need to optimize your build and the whole devotion system results in a lot of time required researching and planning just to get your build moving... again I understand the appeal, it's just not really for me which is why I have never committed to POE. I started playing POE and gave up within a few hours once I started trying to maneuver it's needlessly convoluted progression tree... it honestly boils down to "increase stats and make bigger! More boom!" but it approaches that in such an unnecessarily complex manner. when you need to research for hours before you can start playing I'm usually not going to bother. In addition, the sheer number of stats on items in Grim Dawn is needlessly overwhelming... there's elemental damage, then there's fire damage, then burning, then random skill level bonus... ect, ect... it makes deciding whether a new item is an improvement very challenging... I don't like this. When I need to pause for 5-15 minutes over a single item dropping to figure out if it's an actual improvement I'm no longer having a good time. Diablo 4 took this issue to a far more egregious level and it honestly feels like a design choice to pad out the game time...

Another grip related to this is how most items that drop, which is A METRIC FUCKTON, will be mostly useless. Especially if you get lucky with a drop early on. I was using the same weapon for 30 levels... which feels terrible. I guess I should be happy to have found a weapon that good at a low level but it also killed my motivation to farm more. Seeing so many weapons drop, thousands... tens of thousands... all worthless because it doesn't have the one stat I need... luckily the game includes a loot filter which is honestly a wonderful addition and should be included in all ARPGs.

In the end, the fruits of the dozens of hours spent researching and figuring out if a new item is actually an upgrade is left clicking rapidly on the screen while goblins explode into giblets and loot. It's so simplistic once you get past building your character.

In contrast, the Souls games avoids all these issues. There's significant build variety and options in a Souls game, yet the stats are simple and self-evident. The focus of depth is on the moment to moment game play over the build itself. Both in navigating the world and in the combat. Instead, the builds are present to facilitate different weapons to use, which are often locked behind stat requirements making using them self-evident. A lot of effort is poured into the different weapons' attack animations and abilities. While plenty of weapons in Souls games will have similar movements, there's enough variety to generate a ton of depth and replay value. In addition, while a Souls game is a preset world, the games in the Souls series are known (for good reason) for superb level design. Making navigating and exploring my favorite aspects of the games. I also prefer having guarantees when it comes to loot. When it comes to pure RNG loot progression, I find myself getting frustrated especially when an exceptionally rare item with specific randomly generated stats is required for a build to work effectively. Some things in Souls games are RNG dependent (such as a weapon dropped by an enemy) but the item itself, once dropped, is the same in every play through. Making it predictable.

In the end, if I am going to playthrough the same game multiple times, like all Diablo-esque ARPGs are designed around, I prefer a game that has great world and level design that is enjoyable to explore. To be fair, I have never beaten a Souls game on NG+. I always find myself enjoying a new character and build to experience the journey with a fresh spin. I plan to do just that with Elden Ring once the DLC is finally announced. I guess I just find a clear end point more appealing in a game than a game that doesn't try to have an ending. Nothing wrong with liking and finding appealing an endless game, just not for me. I find endings to be satisfying (when done right).

Grim Dawn was a fun distraction though. If you are a fan of this type of ARPG this will definitely satisfy that itch. It's honestly one of the best in the genre. It has plenty of interesting ideas and it's fun! I just don't see myself replaying this game over and over again to progress to the end game content. To be fair, I don't even care to do that in Diablo 2.

They nailed the gameplay, it's fun and addictive. But after 2-3 hours of playtime, I started to feel overwhelmed, especially because of items. Maybe the developers wanted the game to be more rewarding than Diablo? So much loot, and even magic and rare items have too many abilities. And there's the possibility to combine them with gem-like items which give them even more abilities. So much to choose from, it's tiring.

Also, the map takes more time and effort to explore, compared to the corridor-like map design of Diablo. I don't like the fact that I have to rotate the view to see the enemies.

I am just 10 hours into the game but it's safe to say that this is one of the best diablo clones, maybe the second best to POE. It ressembles POE more than Diablo, in a both negative and positive way.

The whole look is very close to POE. The game is of 2016 but looks like ten years older at least. Very gritty and old school in a cool way, not as good as POE though.

The character crafting is fairly complex and there are a lot of options to chose from. Basically you combine two classes into one making up 72 diffrent class combinations with cool names like Witchhunter, Dervish, Archon etc. which supposedly all play fairly unique.

The devotion system is like POE's passive skill tree but I'd say even better. It's nearly as complex but it also does not merely consist of bland number increase. It can give you nice looking procs like resurrection or meteors even outside of those classes.

Grim Dawn does have the problem with the bland number increase a little though, just like POE. While a new skill or item in Diablo 3 always looks and feels super unique, the milestones and threshholds you'll arrive at in your character progression do not feel as spectacular as in the original Diablo series.

This is a huge problem of POE as well. The whole passive tree is cool and all, but it just increases certain numbers. It doesn't make my character look feel or fight in a different way. It's just tinkering around to min/max your calculation. I see that people enjoy this as an intellectual challenge or something, but it's secondary to me.

The combat feel of Grim Dawn is pretty neat though and I prefer it to POE so far. The characters and spells look and feel very different and I love the atmospheric sceneries the game takes you to. I ignored the story, but I read some people enjoyed.

I'd recommend this game in sale while waiting for D4.

Played a little bit during stream free trial. I like the game and will definitely buy it at some point when the price for it + all dlc is super cheap. I got to nearly level 20 as a soldier on veteran difficulty. I like to play tank characters that combine physical toughness, heavy armor, shields and buffing/healing/debilitating magic. Soldier covers the first aspect but I had no idea what to take for my 2nd mastery. Nightblade has frost that slows enemies (something I like) and a heal, but is more of a dual wielding rogue type so most of its abilities would not be useful at all. Shaman, arcanist and occultist are interesting in concept but do not offer the types of abilities I want. It was a good thing I looked this up online rather than in game because of the dlc classes. Both inquisitor and oathbearer are interesting. Inquisitor has some defensive abilities though I do not like its theme of using gadgets rather than innate magic. Oathbearer has the paladin theme that I like and I probably would have started as that class. It has some shield synergy but overall seems more offensive than the soldier. Will most likely go with Oathbearer as my 2nd.

First weapon I found was a gun so I played mostly ranged. I like playing ranged types as well as melee tanks and I appreciate the ability to do both as the same time in this game, though how well that holds up later into the game I do not know. I use a melee + shield as one weapon set with the other being a 2h ranged; I typically went around shooting things and switched to melee when enemies closed in. I put my points into raw stats and ignored skills until level 10, then I got some useful skills at 1 point just to make the game more interesting. I use cadence as my main attack and especially like how it works with both melee and ranged. Use forcewave and blitz for melee; big fan of stuns and charge type attacks. I definitely like the soldier. I started on the Order path for my devotion.

It's Titan Quest (identical sytems and even the same engine) but with cooler visuals, greatly improved UI/balance, and some hokey new constellation tree that has you searching for shrines to unlock points, which buy stat upgrades, in a needless complex method. What's cool about the constellation tree is you can unlock procs and attach them to skills (like making an attack have a chance to proc a big explosion).

Ultimatly it offers very little that hasn't been done a million times in other d2-clones, it just does them better than just about any other game since. If you want more d2 this is a must play, otherwise steer-clear. If you want to play the absolute best d2-clone though get Path of Exile.

Grim Dawn is quirky and different. While it advertises itself like diablo 2, it's certainly nothing like diablo 3. I found that digging deeper, this game is nothing like diablo 2 either. Aesthetically it looks a bit like diablo 2 at a glance, the music is also quite nice and appropiate potentially reminding one slightly of matt uleman's soundtrack as it weaves throughout the gameworld. oh and of course its an actionRPG, whatever that means... (something like league of legends but not league of legends? Shrug :P)

Most similiarities seem to end there.

The mechanics in this game, skills classes are their own 100%. The first two hours i floundered about not really understanding anything, Then i started to browse the site, the forums and a few other places. Making a build in this seemed super confusing. There's lots of paths you can pick. So, it has a bit of a learning curve. I also found that (for my class anyway) things go a bit slow and while I went in with hardcore off the bat and went a bit more cautious like, its still a bit slow until a certain point. (I died twice before completing the game on Normal Difficulty. Once due to world death, second due to a champion type enemy which i just couldnt ...resist.)

First thing I noticed was that armor isnt a global pool. The game has location based damage that are randomly determined where rolled hits land, this means if you have a magic hood with low armor and gt hit in the head those hits (roughly 20%, iirc) will land more damage, not sure about concussed effects. I cant really tell how this translates into gameplay, I'd say not much since it means theres like a roughly 20% chance you might get increased crit if a blow say lands on your head and you dont have good armor there (Damage cuts through)

Second thing, whole lot more 'elemental damage' the game describes elelemental as fire, ice and electrical but theres about 10 other kinds of damage. The way damage works is also different, and probably the most important thing to get the knack of.

First, you get bonsues to damage already in effect, a quick look at the tab II of your stats will show you this. You ned to be dealing fire damage to yield % bonuses to what you are dealing. that means a weapon or an ability that deal damage of that type.

Gear tends to be useful in some respect, you can for instance saves sets of gear built around doing damage of different elements. This is a bit like diablo. However, I find it a bit too much trouble to really keep different sets and build armor sets around damage types. (I havent played the tougher diff levels yet)

stats and skills are a mess. On level ups you can put a point in three main stats in strength, dex, mental. you also get 3 'skill points' to divide among: active abilities or 'class pool' often you have to spend points in the class pool just to reach the next layer of active abilities (like borderlands 2) spending points on class pool also gives you meager main stat benefits. a lot of other active ability are passive stats, this is wherei t gets a bit confusing to me... There's just too many routes to go into with two classes, multiple trees and all kinds of skills.

It seems criminal to complain of having too much freedom but with a lack of insight into the guts of this game it really throws it all at you at once, and hard to find completementary builds! since it seemsl ike spending points gives you global stat increase in some regard, makes it hard to look for synergies. To make things more complicated, you get two class pools and class tiers, basically dual classes, which vie for your points. And finally, you have constellation points, where you have the cool skyrimy star map and spend points among five elements to complete constellations for bonsues. I found myself longing to just get constellation points cause this was something i could wrap my head around a bit easier, and i could go for synergies here much easier. It also progresses quite cool and nicely, putting points in certain elements unlocks access to other conestallations in the 'sky', but getting those constellation points is event driven and not level based, and its more of a 'bonus' as implement and provides a way to round out your character and leans heavy on the 'role' playing aspect too. You certainly couldnt 'build' a whole character around Constellation points.... maybe.

Daunting as character building is... i breathed a sigh of relief when finding that I can reroll character with minimal penalty. taking points off and trying something else. This gave me some comfort and i began experimenting with different attacks maxed out to find what i liked. I could also do this if i found gear and wanted to just do something around a drop, etc. It takes way too long to level in this game to be stuck with things. It's really ruthless levelling curve.

playing the game is also quirky when it comes to decisions on gear. a glance at UI of weapons get you a quick reading of what gives you more dPS, and it works well enough. armor and shields however do not. due to the way the damage system works with elemental damage its also taking time to learn. physical weapon that has an affix of say an extra +10 fire damage, with 15% physical getting converted to fire, then maybe you have gear (or maybe the weapon) gives a bonsu of another +5% damage, its a bit to consider. you actually need to be dealing fire damage to reap benefits from +5% fire damage amulets. you can at least looks at the quick dps readout when switching back and forth, but its more complicated than i first realized. Sometimes I also dont trust some of the DPS improvements.

theres also junky parts/mods to put on your gear. add a few wicked nails to your axe to give it bleeding base damage and bonus to bleeding, etc. this is a nice touch but it feels a bit OP, espeiclaly with the ability to upgrade these parts like gems, and theres a ton of parts. i like how you can actually customize your equipment, if you have a build that focuses on certain damage types you can add even more, or add some other elemental damage in your secondary weapon slot if you face resistant enemies. I found it strange however that i'd tend to hoard all these item echantments and nest them in the stash and really only had one or two sets of gear. (could be a woe of normal)

questing, lore, rep system its all quite nice. The story is average but the lore is pretty cool! There are CnC with your dialogue trees! sometimtes you come across events and things and need mat-like items or other things to resolve them. There are secrets, secret passages, and secret stashes. Every 'champion' is hand made and i dont think anything is random. In short this game is nice in how it actually feels like some kind of RPG... you can do some reading and feel a bit more involved. sometimes its a real chore to find the sidequest location, but often its nice to have to think a bit about what you are doing or where you are going. I found the balance to be good if you methodically clear stuff and explore maps and complete sidequests. If you venture forward or back a bit there is a slight scaling modifier that keeps things roughly in pace. I thought a whole lots of these things really were spot on and perfect. At first I wasnt sure how i'd feel about a lack of randomized maps, but the fact there are secrets make for incentive to explore and i've already found things i didnt the first time around in 20 mins of a second playthrough.

and as hack and slash it delivers. game has nice violent graphics and sprites. axeing your way through the undead is quite gratifying and i feel looks better than D3. People describe other ways to kill the enemies with their builds and they sound similiarly gratifying if you like violence of it all. however i dont in general like the way the game looks for some reason. for one thing its hard to see things like breakable objects or doors at times (there arent any switches fortunately) or even enemies. when skills cool down the icons are small so its not too obvious. the way all the art blends in took some time for me to get used to but its fine enough i suppose, the graphics themselves are detailed and look good on higher resolution, and the armors you equip also look quite good if you are into that sort of thing. I had a terrible time getting this game to not lag awful on me at first, then i installed Geforce Experience and it optimized the settings and ran smooth and looked way better that what i had been playing it on. go figure.

the game is fun, but its nothing like diablo 3 and not really D2 either. i would imagine most people who pick it up come from both camps most likely and the game is its own thing. Yet, humorously enough a lot of aesthetic an interface concepts they lifted from WoW which kind of is suprising because the game is dark and gothy. The char building system is really weird and the game plays quite differently, it is however nicely done, well designed for the most part and creative. The game has a lot of detail and you'll get into it and notice things with the god forsaken amount of time it requires of the player. no videos but major NPCS have a decent enough deal of voice acting. There's detail in differnet spots of various kinds and i welcome the freshness of something different. however i wish the char building was a bit easier to understand, it's very freeform and the mechanics are a bit more complicated than what anyone in the D3 crowd has gotten used to. It feels experiemntal. Trying to makes sense of it took a bit of time (but wasnt too bad iguess) The game isnt popular or well renown enough to have enough info or builds to look up, and whats littered on the forums is kind of outdated. so its a bit hard i'm finding to learn the game.

should you play GD? Prospective D3 players? Well its not really d3, not really a contestant against it either. it has it's own merits but remains a bit clunky. If you like the old style of games you'll enjoy this. If you like streamlined stuff in new games? Not gonna do it for you. If you like old hack and slash games and CRPGs (its not a CRPG but it has a lot of elements) its worth looking into. It's a good game for single player. The game is pretty impressive. I dont particularly like how hardcore played on this. Rather than have a a route making one go slow and learn the ins and outs and get a real feel for your limits hardcore is just punishing and cheap deaths due to worldspawn style kills as your sense of balance gets broken and you jump of the edge of the knife. (yes this game has hazardous environments that will just kill you) areas that willlaunch a few high level enemies every now and then that ultimtely are deisnged to whomp you once in a while, and very challenging handmade boss fights. Ther'es very little a player can seem to do to pace themselves and prevent a death due to the way grinding works (its very slow) and the way 'special boss type' enemies will spanw always very much ahead of player level. its nice to be able to modify and tweak things and experiment. This is a game for those who love RPGS far and wide and want to experiment. I'd say you'd like it if you have quite a bit of experience with games in general and like different games, including old games, are okay learning a bit and experiemnting. GD isnt for everyone, i wont bother to try to get my D3 friends to play it. Its very much feeling like an old school type game with contemporary benefits and features. Kinda like what you'd expect if Darkstone or Throne of Darkness got a heap of 30 years worth of patches... ;D

My main criticsim would be a bit of a dry learning curve with little hand holding and the amount of time and effort to level, this makes rolling several cahracters not very attractive to me but it's a good experience all the same, and pretty impressive from a few angles, and ultimatley is a rather refined game of decent quality (which was my main concern 100% with something like it) yes there are various hiccups here and there but they are quite minor all things considered and i look forward to playing titan quest series when i'm done here.

9/10

Grim Dawn essentially checks off everything that it needs to be a great hack n' slash RPG:

- Awesome leveling system: put points into your stats, use devotion points to further build your character with a ton of different constellations that offer different bonuses, and level up your class/skills in a way that is a lot like Titan Quest, down to being able to have two classes on the go at a time.

- Lots of loot. So much loot. Maybe too much loot.

- Dark visuals that are very atmospheric.

- Lots of hacking and slashing. Sure it's repetitive, but I have a soft spot for this genre.

- Pretty cool music that doesn't always call attention to itself, but does a good job. It's not Reaper of Souls good but it's completely solid.

I don't care much for the story, but I don't focus on that a lot in this genre. I could be wrong here but I don't think the places you travel are generated in the same way that games like Diablo are, so replay value may not be there (again, I'm not sure). I still love this game and it sits in the second tier of the genre for me.

Update, since I haven't in a while. I am still playing this. Too much. And at the detriment of the other games I had already started before I got into this. I try to go play something else and Grim Dawn says "Come baaaaack......". And then I do.

It's mindless clicking (especially the build I play in these types of games), with a nice loot treadmill, so I'm always eager to get in and get more. It's fun and I feel powerful and just want to see how much stronger I can get. The loot and leveling system is actually almost too deep for me, again especially for the character I tend to play. There are essentially 4 skill tracks to monitor, more wearable accessories than I think I usually see and wayyyy more crafting and equipment add-ons than I need/use. But I'm glad it's there, in case I really do dig in and get crazy into it.

The story is good, but also a bit deep for me. Again, it's nice that it's there, but I don't have the attention/desire to really dig in to all of the side-lore. I skim it and get the gist, but I don't think I could tell you about everything that's happening with all of the bits and pieces of journals you pick up and piece together.

I have to do some soul-searching to determine whether I will be playing past end-game though, either grinding out more for my main character or exploring the other classes you can build. I have so many other games I want to play, but this game is just too simple and satisfying to want to stop.

Also, referencing my last update, I did find dual-wield. I have -one- point in my secondary class just to activate dual-wielding and everything else is getting pumped into my main class.

On the note about how deep the game mechanics are, I would also mention that it actually feels like it gives you too much of the extra stuff too soon. I can do all of this extra crafting or purchasing or dismantling or skill tree leveling, but most of it seems like it's a bit premature for the level I am at. Many of the benefits don't seem to be applicable to lower levels they are introduced at. Good for future planning, I suppose. And again-again, I'd rather it be there and have the option than it not be there and have the game actually be too simple, even though I play about as simply as you can.

Actually got a chance to put a little time into this. So far, so good. As expected, it's pretty much a newly-skinned Diablo/Titan Quest.

I generally play boring tank/DPS characters in these games, so I don't usually get around to seeing the fancy spells and pets and all of that stuff. Someone has to play these characters though, right? Maybe I will start an alt at some point just to see what that side of coin is like, but in the meantime, I pretty much embody the "hack'n'slash" mentality.

The biggest downside so far with that is that I do not see Dual Wield as an option yet. I don't know if it will be relegated to specific yet-to-be-seen weapons, but I don't see it in the skill tree, like I think it was in Titan Quest. I see a lot of shield buffs and skills, which I'm not so into, but we will see.

Don't know when I will get to play again, but hopefully soon!